Social audits show 1.33 lakh flaws in MGNREGA: Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Bengaluru: Union Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Thursday charged that more than 1.33 lakh irregularities had been detected in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Karnataka through social audits.

Addressing a press conference with Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy and state BJP leaders, Chouhan displayed a photograph of a man wearing a saree to fraudulently claim MGNREGA wages in Yadgir district and cited it as an example of the scale of corruption.

He said it was alarming that the state government had taken no action in 3,551 cases exposed through social audits, despite the possibility of recovering Rs 107.78 crore.

Referring to the CAG report, he said only Rs 2.47 crore had actually been recovered, though Lokpal authorities had recommended recovery of Rs 24.12 crore.  

Accusing the Congress of guaranteeing “commissions, corruption and bad governance,” he said the party was levelling allegations against the Centre to hide its failures.

Elaborating specific instances, he said 21 works were to be executed in five gram panchayats of Aland taluk in Kalaburagi district in 2024–25. But the physical inspections revealed the use of machines instead of human labour and the creation of fake records to siphon off funds, he claimed.

In Kallur gram panchayat, a school compound wall was constructed but shown in records as a toilet, while a lake excavation was shown as a rainwater harvesting structure. 

Chouhan alleged that one work was split into multiple parts to draw additional funds and that several works existed only on paper.

In some villages, members of a family were repeatedly shown as beneficiaries. In lake desilting works, silt was dumped on the bund and washed back into the lake during rains, after which funds were again claimed by showing the same lake as freshly desilted.

Rejecting allegations of discrimination, he said the UPA government released Rs 8,739.32 crore to Karnataka between 2006–07 and 2013–14, while the NDA released Rs 48,549.82 crore